Optimisation : A case study of utilising teachingspace

This paper presents an approach to distributed optimisation applied to the problem of teaching space utilisation in a college. We describe the basic ingredients of the problem and analyse various solutions, some produced in a centralised environment and some in a distributed environment. The main aim is to investigate how distributed optimisation may be formulated. In particular we introduce a \broker"-based approach for interdepartmental sharing of resources, with a view to nding a reasonable compromise between allowing a degree of autonomy for individual departments and optimising the global usage of resources at the college level. Various results of the experiments based on diierent optimisation criteria and heuristics are presented and analysed.